Storage media performance management

ABSTRACT

A method or system for comprises determining a certification level of storage area for storing data of a write request based on a characteristic of the data, selecting a target storage area based on a media certification table and the determined certification level and storing data at the target storage area.

BACKGROUND

The requirements for data storage, retrieval, and analysis haveincreased along with the need for cheaper and faster data storagedevices. Data storage devices, such as disc drives, solid state drives,solid state hybrid drives, etc., store data to various differentrecording media. This requires various non-volatile storage methods.Disc drives are widely used as data storage device in computing systems.To meet the increasing needs, disc drives providers have traditionallyincreased the capacity of the disc drives by increasing the density ofrecording on the disc drives. At the same time, given the vast amount ofdata being stored and processed by users as well as the competitivenessof the industry, storage device providers are under pressure to continuedriving down the unit cost.

SUMMARY

This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in asimplified form that are further described below in the DetailedDescription. This Summary is not intended to identify key features oressential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended tobe used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter. Otherfeatures, details, utilities, and advantages of the claimed subjectmatter will be apparent from the following, more particular writtenDetailed Description of various implementations and implementations asfurther illustrated in the accompanying drawings and defined in theappended claims.

A method or system for comprises determining a certification level ofstorage area for storing data of a write request based on acharacteristic of the data, selecting a target storage area based on amedia certification table and the determined certification level of themedia area and storing data at the target storage area.

These and various other features and advantages will be apparent from areading of the following detailed description.

BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS OF THE DRAWINGS

The described technology is best understood from the following DetailedDescription describing various implementations read in connection withthe accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 discloses an example system that uses storage media with at leastsome sections that are partially certified.

FIG. 2 an example flowchart of operations for storing the data based onthe read heat and the write heat of the data.

FIG. 3 illustrates an example flowchart of operations mirroring databased on the certification level of a target storage location.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example flowchart for mirroring data orredirecting data to a new storage location.

FIG. 5 illustrates an example flowchart for processing multipleconcurrent, independently sortable, write operations.

FIG. 6 illustrates an example flowchart for migrating data based oncertification levels.

DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS

In the following description, for the purposes of explanation, numerousspecific details are set forth in order to provide a thoroughunderstanding of the various implementations described herein. Whilevarious features are ascribed to particular implementations, it shouldbe appreciated that the features described with respect to oneimplementation may be incorporated with other implementations as well.By the same token, however, no single feature or features of anydescribed implementation should be considered essential, as otherimplementations may omit such features.

As the requirements for data storage, retrieval, and analysis increases,the need for cheaper and faster data storage devices also increases.Disc drives are widely used as data storage devices for computingsystems. Such data storage devices, including hard disc drives and solidstate hybrid drives, store data on magnetic media, as well as opticalmedia, solid state media such as NAND, NVRAM, Resistive RAM (ReRAM),Magnetic RAM (MRAM), Phase Change Memory (PCM), and other advanced andstaid memory technologies. To meet the increasing need, data storageproviders have to increase the size of the storage devices, as well asthe density of the data on the various media. In some implementations,adding more heads and discs may increase the size of the storagedevices, however, in other implementations the form factor size of thestorage device is increased to achieve larger size. Substantially, everybyte of storage capacity that the storage providers provide to theirclients has a production cost attached thereto. For example, such costmay be specified in terms of dollars earned per terabytes. Generally,for disc drive providers and other storage capacity providers, it costsmore to produce more storage capacity for a given density. However,given the competitive nature of the storage industry, the price that thestorage providers can extract from their clients is limited by marketforces. Therefore, the storage providers have incentive to reduce theunit production cost of storage as sold to their clients to increasetheir profit margin and stay competitive.

The production capacity of storage device manufacturers is inelastic andhuge capital investments are needed to physically expand via newfactories, therefore the storage device manufacturers have an incentiveto maximize utilization of the existing factory capacity. In otherwords, storage device manufacturers are acutely interested in generatingmore storage capacity throughput per unit manufacturing space. Onemanner in which the storage device manufacturers can generate morestorage capacity per unit manufacturing capacity (in terms of space,time, etc.) is to reduce the factory time required to produce unitstorage capacity. For example, the storage device manufacturers areinterested in reducing the factory time per production of 1 TB ofstorage capacity.

During production of storage media, and during assembly of the storagedevice, storage media is certified by the storage media manufacturersfor a number of storage media physical properties. Such certificationmay involve multiple iterations of scanning the storage media forparticle defects, manufacturing defects, abnormalities, etc. Suchcertification often takes a long time (increasing the factory time perTB produced), and of course as the total capacity produced per unitincreases, the total certification process becomes commensurately longerper unit. As a result each drive consumes more factory bandwidth orfactory throughput capacity.

Implementations disclosed herein provide for reducing the per unitfactory time by reducing the time spent on certification of a givenstorage capacity (TB). Specifically, the implementations disclosedherein provide the storage media using partial certification (also knownas finish-in-the-field) of the device capacity wherein a storage deviceis shipped to a client with less than the full capacity of the storagemedia having been fully being certified. In some implementations,different sections of the storage media are certified to differentlevels. Thus, for example, a first section of the storage media iscertified at high certification level, a second section of the storagemedia is certified at a medium certification level, and a third sectionof the storage media is certified at a low certification level, etc. Insome implementation, the certification level may be based on or relatedto the predictability with which the data can be read from or written toa given section of the storage media (for a given level of reliability).For example, if for a given storage section, the predictability(alternatively reliability, speed, etc.) of writing the data accuratelyis low, the given section may be given a “low” certification level.Other criteria used to determine the certification level may be the timeto write data with given reliability, the time to read data with givenreliability, etc.

In one implementation, the information about the level of certificationof the different sections of the various storage media may be stored ina certification table (also referred to as media certification statetable, media latency predictability table, media reliability table,etc.), which is also stored on the storage media. Such a certificationtable may be stored on the sections of the storage media that arecertified at a very high level of predictability/reliability.Furthermore, such sections of highly certified media may also be usedfor storing other critical system metadata or data such as recordingsubsystem (RSS) data, etc.

FIG. 1 discloses an example system 100 that uses storage media with atleast some sections that are partially certified. Specifically, thesystem 100 includes a computing device 102 having a processor 104 thatis communicatively connected to a storage device 110. While the system100 is illustrated to have the storage device 110 external to thecomputing device 102, in an alternative implementation, the storagedevice 110 may be internal to the computing device 102. The storagedevice 110 may be, for example, a magnetic disc drive, an optical discdrive, a flash drive, other solid state media such as NAND, NVRAM,resistive RAM, mRAM, phase change memory (PCM), solid state hybriddrives, etc. The storage device 110 includes a storage controller 112and storage media 114.

The storage controller 112 is configured to receive storage commandsfrom the computing device 102 and process the storage commands to readdata from the storage media 114, write data to the storage media 114,control movement of a read/write head (if necessary), etc. The storagecontroller 112 is also configured to control various data flow and datamigration operations, data caching operations, data steering operations,etc. For example, the storage controller 112 steers data between thehost computing device 102 and the storage media 114, between the storagemedia 114 and one or more cache memories (not shown) external orinternal to the storage device 110, etc. Furthermore, the storagecontroller 112 also generates and stores the mapping of the storageregions 122, 124, 126 to logical block addresses (LBAs). Specifically,the usable storage regions of the storage media 114 are mapped to theLBA space.

In one implementation, the storage media 114, shown here with anexpanded view of a storage area 120, may be divided into a number ofsections such that the certification levels of the various sections aredifferent. Specifically, the storage area 120 is divided into a highcertification section 122, a medium certification section 124, a lowcertification section 126, and an uncertified section (not shown). Forexample, during the manufacturing of the storage media 114, the sectionsof the storage media 114 represented by the high certification section122 may be scanned and rescanned a number of times to ensure that thenumber of defects to the media is substantially predictable. On theother hand, the sections of the storage media 114 represented by themedium certification section 124 may be scanned relatively few times andas a result, the confidence level of the medium certification section124 having no defects is low. Finally, the low certification section 126may be scanned even less number of times. Note that while theillustrated implementation of the storage area 120 is divided into onlythree sections, in an alternative implementation, a more or less numberof sections may be provided.

In one implementation of the storage device 110, the high certificationsection 122 further includes a certification table 140 that includesinformation about the certification level of various sections of thestorage media 114. In one implementation, the certification table 140 isdynamically managed such that the certification level of varioussections of the storage media 114 is updated in a dynamic manner duringoperation of the storage device 110. For example, if attempts to writedata to or to read data from a particular storage section of the storagemedia 114 encounters a number of errors above a threshold, thatparticular section may be associated with a predetermined level ofcertification and information about such predetermined level ofcertification may be stored in the certification table 140 to bereferenced for later use. Furthermore, the information stored in thecertification table 140 may also be copied locally to the storagecontroller 112 for fast access.

In one implementation, the storage device 110 also includes a recordingsubsystem (RSS) section 116 that stores various recording subsystemdata, which can be used by the storage controller 112 to reference thestorage media 114. For example, such data stored in the RSS may includeat what fly height a recording head of the storage device needs to beoperated, how to manage a seek operation, whether defects exists on thestorage media, the location of such defects, etc. The RSS 116 may be inthe form of hardware, firmware, or software stored on the storagecontroller 112. In one implementation, the manufacturer of the mediaprovides the RSS data and it is supplemented dynamically with otherdata, such as the data from the certification table 140, or othermetadata from the storage controller 112. Furthermore, the RSS data mayalso be stored on the storage media 114.

In one implementation, the storage controller 112 analyzes variousrequests received from the host computing device 102 and supplants thiswith the data from the certification table 140 to determine how to bestserve the request. For example, the storage controller 112 may reviewthe data properties of a write request to determine the desired level ofcertification of the sections where the data is to be stored. Thus, ifthe computing device 102 sends a write request for writing data withhigh data heat, the storage controller 112 writes such data to the highcertification region 122. The data heat may be determined, for example,based on the number of access requests made to certain part of thestorage media per unit time, as determined by the LBA of the requests.

As an example, if a particular LBA block has received a large number ofread requests in a predetermined time period, the data that is directedto those sections, and any proximal data, may be assigned a high readheat level. In such a case, the data with high read heat is directed tostorage sections with high read certification level. Conversely, if arequest to an LBA is rare, the storage controller 112 ascertains it tobe cold data region and data for write requests directed to such LBA isdirected to storage sections with low certification. Similarly, datawith high write heat level may be directed to storage sections with highwrite certification level, etc. Furthermore, some storage sections maybe determined for both the read certification level and the writecertification level. The information about the read certification levelsand the write certification levels may be stored in a mediacertification table.

Furthermore, the certification level of the target storage section mayalso be chosen/determined based on the data reliability requirements,compressibility, or other characteristics of the data. Thus, forexample, if the computing device 102 sends a write request for writingdata that can tolerate some loss, such as video data, high resolutionimage data, etc., such data may be stored in the medium certificationregion 124, or even to the low certification region 126.

Yet alternatively, the storage controller 112 determines whether tomirror the data it is storing on a given section of the storage media114 based on the known characteristics of the data and/or thecertification level of the target storage section. Thus, if the storagecontroller determines that there is no space available in the highcertification section 122 and it has to write some data with a highlevel of perceived importance to the medium or low certification section124, the storage controller 112 may also mirror the data at some otherlocation on the storage device 110, such a cache, or to another locationthat is off the storage device 110. In one implementation, thedestination where the mirror data is stored has high certification levelfor reliability.

Furthermore, the certification of various data sections on the storagemedia 114 may also be determined based on the type of operation. Forexample, some sections of the storage media 114 may have highcertification level for writing data where data can be written with highlevel of predictability. On the other hand, the same sections may havelow read predictability, possibly persistent, resulting inpredictability low, or low predictability, performance when readingdata. Specifically, sections having low predictability are sections thatbeen incompletely certified or never certified. On the other hand,sections having predictably low performance have been at least minimallycertified or have had its certification process truncated or limited forvarious reasons and for which no additional certification is planned. Asa result, such predictably low performance may be persistent for a longtime, even forever in some circumstances.

The certification table 140 may maintain the certification informationfor both read certification and the write certification. In such a case,the storage controller 112 may use such operation specific certificationinformation to direct read and write operations. For example, datadirected to a read hot LBAs that is read often may be stored in storagesections with high level of read certification. On the other hand, datadirected to write hot LBAs that is written to often is directed tostorage sections with high level of write certification.

FIG. 2 an example flowchart 200 of operations for storing the data basedon the read heat (RH) and the write heat (WH) of the data. Theoperations of the flowchart 200 may be implemented, for example, on astorage controller of a storage device. An operation 202 receives awrite request, such as a write request received at a storage controllerfrom a host computing device. The write request may specify the LBA ofthe write data attached to the write request or alternatively, thestorage controller may determine the LBA of the write data. An operation204 determines the read heat and the write heat of the write data. Forexample, based on the LBA of the write data, the storage controller maydetermine the read heat of the write data to be high if there has been alot of read request to the LBA. Similarly, the storage controller mayalso determine the write heat based on the number of write requests tothe LBA.

An operation 206 compares the read heat and the write heat of the writedata to a read heat threshold (Tr) and a write heat threshold (Tw). Notethat while the implementation of the flowchart 200 discloses comparisonto only one threshold for each read heat and the write heat, inalternative implementation, a number of heat levels may be used todetermine the storage location for the data. As illustrated by 208, ifthe read heat is above the read heat threshold and the write heat isbelow the write heat threshold, the write data is stored to a sectionwith high read heat predictability at operation 210. On the other hand,if both the read heat is above the read heat threshold and the writeheat is above the write heat threshold (212), the write data is storedto a section with high read heat and write heat certification atoperation 214. Similarly, if both the read heat is below the read heatthreshold and the write heat is below the write heat threshold (216),the write data is stored to a section with low read heat and write heatcertification at operation 218. Finally, as illustrated by 220, if theread heat is below the read heat threshold and the write heat is abovethe write heat threshold, the write data is stored to a section withhigh write heat certification at operation 222.

FIG. 3 illustrates an example flowchart 300 of operations mirroring databased on the certification level of a target storage location. Anoperation 302 receives a write request, such as a write request receivedat a storage controller from a host computing device. The write requestmay specify the LBA of the write data attached to the write request oralternatively, the storage controller may determine the LBA of the writedata. An operation 304 determines the target location where the writedata from the request is stored. A storage controller may use a tableproviding mapping of LBA to physical storage locations to determine thetarget location where the data is to be stored.

An operation 306 determines values or weights related to various dataproperties. The determined values or weights are used by the storagecontroller to determine whether the write data should be mirrored ornot. Such controller criteria may incorporate information such as thedata heat, data compression levels, and other properties of the data,the certification levels of the available target storage location(s),workload rating, etc. For example, the workload rating may be similar tothe “duty cycle” and can be qualitatively stated as the amount of datamoved to a location over lifetime of a drive, the amount of data movedto a location per day, etc.

A determining operation 308 uses the metadata generated at the operation306 to determine whether the write data is to be mirrored. For example,the storage controller may use a criteria where weights are given to thedata heat levels and the certification levels and if the mirroring scorecalculated using a weighted combination of such values is above athreshold, the write data is mirrored. For example, if the data heatlevel is high and the certification level of the target storage locationis low, the write data is mirrored.

If it is determined that the data is not to be mirrored, an operation310 stores the data at the target location. On the other hand, if it isdetermined that the data is to be mirrored, an operation 312 stores thedata at a location with high certification level as mirrored data andconcurrently to a NAND, etc. Alternatively, the operation 312 may alsomirror the data in other locations such as a cache, etc. Furthermore,another operation 314 writes the data to the target location. If thetarget location has a lower certification level, it may require morethan one attempts to write data to the target location. Thus, adetermining operation 316 determines whether the write operation wassuccessful. If the write operation is not successful more attempts maybe made to store the data at the target location. Once it is determinedthat the write operation was successful, an operation 322 deletes themirrored data, which, in this case may be stored at a high certificationsection, a cache, etc. If the write operation is not successful after apredetermined number of attempts, an operation 320 writes the data to anew location, in which case, the mirrored data is unmapped.

An operation 324 collects the data related to the number of attemptsrequired to store the data at the target location, the success rate forthese attempts, etc. The operation 324 may also include a learningmechanism that determines and stores the current certification level ofthe target storage location based on the number of attempts.Furthermore, the operation 324 may also collect data from otheroperations related to the target storage location, such as the number ofattempts to read data from the target storage location, etc., that maybe used to determine the certification level of the target storagelocation. Subsequently, an operation 330 updates a certification tablewith the updated certification information, which may be used forsubsequent access to the media.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example flowchart 400 for mirroring data orredirecting data storage to a new storage location. An operation 402receives a write request, such as a write request received at a storagecontroller from a host computing device. The write request may specifythe LBA of the write data attached to the write request oralternatively, the storage controller may determine the LBA of the writedata. An operation 404 determines the target location where the writedata from the request is stored. A storage controller may use a tableproviding mapping of LBA to physical storage locations to determine thetarget location where the data is to be stored.

An operation 406 performs a write operation based on the targetlocation. Such as write operation may be a normal write operation or adynamic write operation, etc. In one implementation, the operation 406issues more than one concurrent write operation, each write operationdirected to a different section of media. For example, the number ofconcurrent write operations initiated by the operation 406 may depend ondata heat or other data property. Processing of such concurrent writeoperations is further described below in FIG. 5.

An operation 408 determines if there are any issues with the writeoperation. Such issues or troubles may be due to finishedness of thetarget location, etc. If it is determined that there were no issues ortroubles writing the data, the write operation is complete. However, ifan issue is detected that prevents the write operation from completion,a determining operation 420 determines whether to redirect the writeoperation to a different location and/or to mirror the data.

If it is determined that the write operation is to be redirected, anoperation 422 redirects the write to a different location. Suchselection of new location may be based on the certification levels ofdifferent storage locations or it may be selected based on some othercriteria. On the other hand, if it is decided that the data is to bemirrored, an operation 424 mirrors the data to a location that hashigher level of certification or to some other location, such as storagecontroller cache, etc. Furthermore, in an alternative implementation,the determining operation 420 may decide to both direct the writeoperation to a new location and to mirror the data. For example, afterthe operation 424 for mirroring the data is completed, the storagecontroller may attempt to write the data to a different location, asillustrated by the line 426. Yet alternatively, the operation 420 maydetermine that the data is going to be redirected to a differentlocation and mirrored, in which case, an operation 428 for suchredirection and mirroring is performed.

Furthermore, a monitoring operation (not shown) may monitor the variousoperations, various writing attempts, etc., of the flowchart 400,collect data and learn from the operations to determine thecertification level of various sections of the storage media. Suchlearning allows dynamic updating of the certification table as thestorage drive is used in field.

FIG. 5 illustrates an example flowchart 500 for processing multiplewrite operations. An operation 502 receives a write request, such as awrite request received at a storage controller from a host computingdevice. The write request may specify the LBA of the write data attachedto the write request or alternatively, the storage controller maydetermine the LBA of the write data. An operation 504 determines thetarget location where the write data from the request is stored. Astorage controller may use a table providing mapping of LBA to physicalstorage locations to determine the target location where the data is tobe stored.

An operation 506 determines if multiple write operations are to beinitiated. If it is determined that only one write operation is to beinitiated, the control passes to the operation 508 (see operation 406,FIG. 4). Otherwise, an operation 510 initiates more than one concurrentwrite operations. Subsequently, an operation 512 compares the results ofthe write operations to determine which operation completed first. Insuch as case, once at least one of the multiple concurrent writeoperations is complete, the other operations are canceled. Furthermore,an operation 514 updates the certification levels for the various targetsectors where the multiple concurrent operations are directed, based onthe response time for completion of such operations.

FIG. 6 illustrates an example flowchart 600 for migrating data based oncertification levels. Specifically, flowchart 600 illustrates migratingdata between media sections 652, 654, 656 having different certificationlevels. For example, the section 656 may have very high certificationlevel, the section 654 may have medium level of certification, and thesection 652 may have a low level of certification. Note that FIG. 6shows media certification chart 650 with only one certification levelfor each of the media sections 652, 654, 656, in alternativeimplementation, each section may have a read certification, a writecertification, a read-write certification, etc.

The operations of the flowchart 600 migrates data between the variousmedia sections 652, 654, 656 in response to a timer event 602 or athreshold event 604. Herein, the timer event indicates periodicmonitoring and analysis. The result of either an event or timer periodis possibly the migration of already-stored data to a new storage medialocation. The timer event 602 may be generated by a timer atpredetermined time periods. On the other hand, the threshold event 604may be, for example, a signal that indicates that the available space inthe high certification area 656, as shown by the shaded section 670, islow. Other events may be, for example, indication of idle time for astorage controller, receiving of a large data-write request, etc. Inresponse to the event from one of the timer event 602 and the thresholdevent 604, an operation 606 performs data migration analysis. Suchanalysis may involve, for example, evaluating usage levels of thevarious media sections 652, 654, 656, evaluating usage of the datastored in these sections, etc. For example, the threshold event 604 maydetermine that certain data stored in the high certification levelsection 656 has not been used for a while, indicating low read heat forthe data and it may designate such data for transfer to a section withlower certification level than the certification level of section 656.Alternatively, the analysis operation 606 may decide that certain datastored in the low certification section 652 has been modified a highnumber of times and therefore, such data may be marked for migration tothe high certification section 656.

Subsequently, an operation 608 determines if any data migration is to beperformed. If such data migrations are to be performed, migrationoperation such as 660-666 may be performed by an operation 610. Forexample, migration 660 may be migration of data from high certificationlevel section 656 to medium certification level section 654, migration666 may be migration of data from low certification level section 652 tomedium certification level section 654, etc.

The implementations described herein may be implemented as logical stepsin one or more computer systems. The logical operations of the variousimplementations described herein are implemented (1) as a sequence ofprocessor-implemented steps executing in one or more computer systemsand (2) as interconnected machine or circuit modules within one or morecomputer systems. The implementation is a matter of choice, dependent onthe performance requirements of the computer system. Accordingly, thelogical operations making up the implementations of the implementationsdescribed herein are referred to variously as operations, steps,objects, or modules. Furthermore, it should be understood that logicaloperations may be performed in any order, unless explicitly claimedotherwise or a specific order is inherently necessitated by the claimlanguage.

In the interest of clarity, not all of the routine functions of theimplementations described herein are shown and described. It will beappreciated that in the development of any such actual implementation,numerous implementation-specific decisions are made in order to achievethe developer's specific goals, such as compliance with application—andbusiness-related constraints, and that those specific goals will varyfrom one implementation to another and from one developer to another.

The above specification, examples, and data provide a completedescription of the structure and use of example implementations. Becausemany alternate implementations can be made without departing from thespirit and scope of the invention, the invention resides in the claimshereinafter appended. Furthermore, structural features of the differentimplementations may be combined in yet another implementation withoutdeparting from the recited claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method comprising: determining a requiredcertification level of storage section for storing data of a writerequest based on a characteristic of the data; selecting a targetstorage section based on a media certification table and the requireddetermined certification level; and storing data at the target storagesection.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the requiredcertification level further comprises determining the requiredcertification level based on heat of the data.
 3. The method of claim 1,wherein the characteristic of the data is read heat of the data and themedia certification table stores read certification levels for varioussections of a storage media.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein thecharacteristic of the data is write heat of the data and the mediacertification table stores write certification levels for varioussections of a storage media.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein thecharacteristic of the data is data compressibility.
 6. The method ofclaim 1, further comprising determining if the data needs to be mirroredbased on a certification level of the target storage location.
 7. Themethod of claim 6, further comprising mirroring the data at analternative storage location wherein the certification level of thealternative storage location is higher than the certification level ofthe target storage location, if it is determined that the data needs tobe mirrored.
 8. The method of claim 7, further comprising deleting thedata from the alternative storage location if the data is successfullystored at the target storage location.
 9. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising: monitoring the storing operation to collect latency datarelated to the storing operation at the target storage location; andupdating the media certification table based on the collected latencydata.
 10. A method comprising: determining a write certification levelof a target storage area based on latency of an operation to write datato the target storage area.
 11. The method of claim 10, furthercomprising storing a copy of the data to an alternative location, if thedetermined write certification level of the storage area is below acertification threshold.
 12. The method of claim 10, further comprisingdetermining data heat and storing a copy of the data to an alternativelocation, if the determined write certification level of the storagearea is below a certification threshold and the data heat is above adata heat threshold.
 13. The method of claim 10, further comprisingupdating a media certification table based on the determined writecertification level of the target storage area.
 14. The method of claim10, further comprising determining a read certification level of atarget storage area based on latency of an operation to read data fromthe target storage area.
 15. The method of claim 13, further comprisingupdating a media certification table based on the determined readcertification level of the target storage area.
 16. A storage systemcomprising: a storage media; and a storage controller configured to:receive a write request to write data, determining heat of the data, anddetermining a target storage location on the storage media for the databased on the heat of the data and using a media certification table. 17.The storage device of claim 16, wherein the storage controller isfurther configured to determine a write heat of the data and a read heatof the data and wherein the media certification table stores writecertification levels and read certification levels for various sectionsof the storage media.
 18. The storage device of claim 16, wherein thestorage controller is further configured to determine if the data is tobe mirrored based on a certification level of the target storagelocation.
 19. The storage device of claim 18, wherein the storagecontroller is further configured to determine if the data is to bemirrored based on the heat of the data.
 20. The storage device of claim6, wherein on or more sections of the storage media are partiallycertified.
 21. A method comprising: receiving a write request to writedata; determining a property of the data; and initiating a plurality ofconcurrent write operations to a plurality of different target storagelocations, wherein the number of the concurrent write operations and thetarget storage locations are determined based on the property of thedata.
 22. The method of claim 21, wherein the property of the data is atleast one of a read heat level and a write heat level.
 23. The method ofclaim 21, further comprising: receiving an acknowledgement of completionof one of the plurality of the concurrent write operations andterminating the remainder of the plurality of the concurrent writeoperations in response to the acknowledgement.
 24. A method comprising:receiving an event notification; in response to the event notification,determining if certain data is to be moved from a media section having afirst certification level to a media section having a secondcertification level different than the first certification level; andmigrating the certain data.
 25. The method of claim 24, wherein theevent notification is generated in response to storage capacity below athreshold level in a storage section having a first certification level.26. The method of claim 25, wherein the first certification level is atleast one of a read certification level and a write certification level.